


On the Road to Target

by rosa_himmelblau



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 20:08:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20088037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Frank needs towels, and he needs Vince to go with him to buy them.And then things happen.





	On the Road to Target

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwoWeevils](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoWeevils/gifts).

> I wrote this story (if you want to call it that) for a friend who that she was starting a group to avoid inane warnings, ridiculous tags, and  
_\- Outside of designated fic exchange/fic-by-request endeavours, there will be no pizza order stories, i.e., "I want some random person who I don't know and who doesn't know me, to write me a story in which Character A and Character B go shopping at Target where they are kidnapped by rabid Klingons who force them to sing show tunes (but nothing by Gershwin) and somebody breaks a nail. And then they have sex, but nobody shows their pee-pees."_
> 
> So I wrote a pizza order story that included all of the above. And here it is.
> 
> Title: Oh, God, I have to come up with a title for this?  
Genre: WG, V/F  
Length: about 9 in—oh. 1500 words, give or take  
Rating: Rated N for No one  
Warnings: Don't read this. Really. Don't. And if you do, don't say I didn't warn you.  
Summary: I'm not writing a summary. I wrote the story, that should be good enough.  
(I'm having enough problems with Sonny, so I'm leaving him out of it. He'd rather Vinnie had sex with Frank than be in this story. God, everyone's a critic, even the characters in the goddamned universe!)

"You want to go **where**?" Vinnie was standing by the car, holding the open door but not getting in.

"Vince, will you come on? Just get in the car."

"No, not until you repeat what you said."

"I said, I want to go buy some towels." Frank didn't know why he had to repeat this, and he didn't know why he was reluctant to. "The only ones I have are some Jenny, out of the goodness of her heart—" Vince snorted, but didn't say anything "—gave me, and they're the ones we got as wedding presents. You can practically see through them. And a couple of beach towels. So I need some new ones."

"And you need me to come with you because, what, you're afraid you won't know towels when you see them?"

"Will you just get in the car?" Frank yelled.

"All right!" Vince got in and slammed the door. "But I still don't know why I have to go with you."

"Because you'll be using these towels and if you don't like them, you'll complain about them, and while listening to you complain about things is the joy of my life, you already have so many things you complain about, I don't want to add yet another to your already unwieldy list."

"Oh. Well, that's a good reason, anyway. Can we stop for pizza afterward?"

"Yes, we can stop for pizza afterward." Sometimes talking to his boyfriend was exactly like talking to his teenage son, but at least now they were on their way.

But they never made it to the store.

No one wants to believe these things really happen. No one wants to believe that you can be driving along in the wilds of New Jersey, arguing with your lover, when suddenly your car—your moving car!—is stopped by a band of Klingon warriors. But it can happen, even to Frank McPike, OCB Field Supervisor.

_Of course it was a serious breach of the treaty the Klingons signed with the United Federation of Planets; time-traveling itself was a serious breach, but deliberately going back in time to dump unwanted—in this case rabid—Klingons on earth was not just one violation, but a whole slew of violations, so many that the resulting charges took nearly 18 years to straighten out. But that didn't do Frank—or, for that matter, Vinnie—the slightest bit of good._

"What the hell—?" was all Frank had a chance to say before his car was turned over. Vince didn't say anything, he was asleep, until he fell on his head.

"Frank—what's going on?"

"I don't—someone's pounding on the windows—"

"They're growling! Where are we?"

"New Jersey, where do you think we are?" Frank was trying to get the glove compartment open, until he realize his gun was locked up in his apartment, the one he'd probably never see again.

"Are we upside down?" Vince asked, just as the car was flipped back over, which seemed like a good thing until the Klingons started breaking the windows. Frank leaned on the horn, hoping the noise would frighten the marauders away. Instead they tore the doors off the car and dragged Frank and Vinnie out.

"What kind of mushrooms did you tell them to put on that pizza?" Vince asked.

"We didn't get the pizza, remember? We didn't even make it to K-Mart." Though Frank had to admit, hallucination was the only reasonable explanation for what they were looking at.

"I thought we were going to Target."

"What difference does it make?!" Maybe he'd driven off the road, or been hit by an oncoming truck and now he was in the hospital, under sedation and dreaming. That would make sense. This plainly didn't.

They were monsters, a dozen or so of them, large and man-shaped with ridges on their heads and long, sharp teeth. That was frightening, that was certainly bad enough. What was worse—and Frank couldn't have explained exactly **why** it was worse, but it was—was what they were wearing. They were all dressed in different shades of pastel taffeta, long, flowing gowns of it. Frank was pretty sure it was taffeta; taffeta made a distinctive sound when it rustled, and these—whatever they weres—were rustling quite a bit. And what Frank had thought were snarls, he realized with growing fear, were actually smiles! The monsters were smiling! They had him and Vince and the car surrounded, and they were growling and smiling at them.

"This isn't happening," Frank said very calmly. "This isn't happening, and I'm not really here."

"What about me, Frank, am I really here?" Vince asked.

"No, Vince, you're not really here either."

"OK, good. Now that we've established that, what do we do?"

**"SING!!"**

It was not Frank who said that. It was the leader of the monsters. At least, Frank assumed he was the leader; he was the one wearing the tiara and carrying the wand with the star on the end.

"I—what?" That was Vince, who was apparently going to try to negotiate with imaginary monsters. "Sing what?"

The monsters moved closer. "Sing! Musical number!"

"Frank, I want to go home." Vince's negotiating skills seemed to be failing him.

"What do you want us to sing?" Frank asked. He was thinking longingly of the shotgun in the trunk of the car, but the keys were still in the ignition.

"'I Got Rhythm,'" the monster in lavender yelled. Instantly, all the other monsters pulled out some kind of ray-guns and blasted him.

"OK, so no Gershwin, then," Frank heard Vinnie mutter. And, as if the night was not strange enough, he started singing 'Night and Day.'

Frank put his hand to his eye, which had begun to twitch. He was still longing for the shotgun, though at the moment he wasn't sure who he'd shoot if he had it. Himself, maybe.

Just as Vince was running out of words, a bright light appeared, a sort of oval-shaped shimmery blue light. Vince stopped singing. The monsters backed away from the light, so that was probably a good thing, unless it was a bigger, badder monster that scared even them, or maybe the ghost of Oscar Levant, wanting to know what the hell they had against Gershwin music.

It was none of those things. It was an ordinary-looking man wearing a kind of informal-looking uniform. "I'm very sorry about this." As he spoke, the monsters began disappearing, one by one.

"About time," Vince muttered.

"There's been a terrible mistake, which, since you won't remember any of this because none of it will have happened, I can explain to you. You see, these Klingons—they're called Klingons, they're from another planet. And another time. They're rabid—" 

"Rabid?" Frank demanded. **"Rabid?"**

"Well, yes. You see, it's Klingon rabies. Klingons are the most fearsome warriors in the universe, and when they go mad, they—well, you saw. It's awful. Before space travel, rabid Klingons—you don't really want to hear about that, but suffice it to say, sending rabid Klingons to a different planet—in a different time—is the Klingon's idea of being humane. So to speak. But it violates a multitude of laws of Starfleet, not to mention the United Federation of Planets, so we're here to get them. And to undo everything."

"You gonna fix my car?" Frank asked. This guy, he was pretty sure he could take, and if he couldn't, Vince would help him.

"Well, since this won't have happened, your car will be fine. And even though this won't have happened so you won't remember it, I do hope you'll accept our apologies."

"Accept his apologies, Frank, if that's what it takes—"

"Yeah, fine, I accept your apologies."

"Thank you." And the man disappeared.

Frank looked at Vinnie, who was looking at him. His hand was bleeding.

"Are you all right?" Frank went over to him, took his hand to look at it.

"Oh, yeah, just tore back my fingernail, it's bleeding a little."

Frank's heart broke a little, seeing his friend injured this way. "Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"

"What? No, it's fine. What I was thinking about was, Frank, the next time we have sex, you think maybe we could take our clothes off? Because, you know, sometime I'd really like to see your—"

"Vince—!" Frank put his hand back to his once-again twitching eye. Vince always brought this up at the most inopportune moments.

"Hey, you got any idea how we're going to get home?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Are you all right?" Frank asked Vince, who had fallen asleep practically as soon as the car started moving.

"Huh?" Vince opened his eyes. "Oh, yeah, I'm OK. Just a little tired." He yawned. "It's not real surprising."

"What, that you're tired? What do you have to be tired from, you haven't been working?"

Vince yawned again. "Yeah, well, Frank, there's something I've been meaning to tell you. I got one of those EPT things and—"

Frank ran the car off the side of the road.


End file.
